Worldfocus

Today is World Food Day, an international day promoting understanding of world hunger.

There are over 800 million people going hungry in the world — including over 18,000 who die of hunger every day.

The current financial upheaval around the world has impacted global food aid, according to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He added that concentration on local economies will take the focus off of global poverty.

Below are the top submissions for the HungerBytes Video Contest, a YouTube and World Food Programme video contest on hunger. American university students — Emma Thompson, Meri Kate Purgason and Colin Butler — won the contest. They will be sent to Ethiopia on a video project covering hunger’s realities.

The top four videos of the contest: “Time Is Running Out” by the winning trio; “Just Because You Can’t See It” by Shawn Cohen, Sandra Goffin and Rosi Mosca-Herrera; “Food Access for Everybody” by Dominique and “Your Next Meal” by Mark Rosera.

Yesterday, Oct. 15, was Blog Action Day, in which over 12,800 bloggers worldwide posted entries on another pressing social issue: poverty.

From Honduras, “Hugo Chinchilla” says poverty and hunger go hand in hand in his country.

“Osval” of Paraguay expresses his frustration with a lack of leadership that he says made the country one of the poorest in Latin America.

The “This is Zimbabwe” blog writes that “poverty and Zimbabwe are two indistinguishable things.”

From Pakistan, Waleed Zuberi writes about the lower class in his country and a broader sense of empathy around the issue of poverty.

Stavros Dimas of Greece, the European commisioner for environment, compares the situations of developing and developed nations.

The “From Uganda to You” blog describest the slums of Uganda.

Blogger “mangelnoah07″ relays scenes of suffering from the Phillipines.

For a complete list of blog entries from yesterday’s online event, go here.